Tuesday, May 14, 2024
Saturday, April 6, 2024
The Black Dahlia.
On January 15, 1947, Elizabeth Short’s dead body was found in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Leimert Park. The first person who reported the grisly sight was a mother out for a morning walk with her child.
According to the woman, the way Short’s body had been posed made her think that the corpse was a mannequin at first. But a closer look revealed the true horror of the Black Dahlia crime scene.
The 22-year-old Short had been sliced in two at the waist and completely drained of blood. Some of her organs — such as her intestines — had been removed and neatly placed underneath her buttocks. Pieces of flesh had been cut away from her thighs and breasts. And her stomach was full of feces, leading some to believe that she’d been forced to eat them before she was killed.
Elizabeth Short, aka the "Black Dahlia," was just 22 years old when she was brutally murdered in Los Angeles on January 15, 1947. It remains one of Hollywood's most disturbing cold cases to this day.
The most chilling mutilations, however, were the lacerations on her face. The killer had sliced each side of her face from the corners of her mouth to her ears, creating what’s known as a “Glasgow smile.”
Since the body had already been washed clean, Los Angeles Police Department detectives concluded that she must have been killed elsewhere before being dumped in Leimert Park.
Near her body, detectives noted a heel print and a cement sack with traces of blood that had presumably been used to transport her body to the vacant lot. The LAPD reached out to the FBI to help identify the body by searching their fingerprint database. Short’s fingerprints turned up rather quickly because she had applied for a job as a clerk at the U.S. Army’s Camp Cooke commissary in California in 1943.
And then her prints turned up a second time since she had been arrested by the Santa Barbara Police Department for underage drinking — just seven months after she’d applied to the job.
The FBI also had her mugshot from her arrest, which they provided to the press. Before long, the media began reporting every salacious detail they could find about Short.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Short’s mother, Phoebe Short, didn’t learn of her daughter’s death until reporters from The Los Angeles Examiner telephoned her, pretending that Elizabeth had won a beauty contest.
They pumped her for all the details they could get on Elizabeth before revealing the terrible truth. Her daughter had been murdered, and her corpse had been dismembered in unspeakable ways.
As the media learned more about Elizabeth Short’s history, they began to brand her as a sexual deviant. One police report read, “This victim knew at least fifty men at the time of her death and at least twenty-five men had been seen with her in the sixty days preceding her death… She was known as a teaser of men.”
They gave Short the nickname, “The Black Dahlia,” due to her reported preference for wearing a lot of sheer black clothing. This was a reference to the movie The Blue Dahlia, which was out at the time. Some people spread the false rumor that Short was a prostitute, while others baselessly claimed that she liked to tease men because she was a lesbian.
Adding to her mystique, Short was reportedly a Hollywood hopeful. She had moved to Los Angeles just six months before her death and worked as a waitress. Sadly, she had no known acting jobs and her death became her one claim to fame.
But as famous as the case was, authorities had tremendous difficulty figuring out who was behind it. However, members of the media did receive a few clues. On January 21st, about a week after the body was found, the Examiner received a call from a person claiming to be the murderer, who said he would be sending Short’s belongings in the mail as proof of his claim.
Shortly thereafter on the 24th, the Examiner received a package with Short’s birth certificate, photos, business cards, and an address book with the name Mark Hansen on the cover. Also included was a letter pasted together from newspaper and magazine letter clippings that read, “Los Angeles Examiner and other Los Angeles papers here is Dahlia’s belongings letter to follow.”
All of these items had been wiped down with gasoline, leaving no fingerprints behind. Though a partial fingerprint was found on the envelope, it was damaged in transport and never analyzed.
On January 26th, another letter arrived. This handwritten note read, “Here it is. Turning in Wed. January 29, 10 a.m. Had my fun at police. Black Dahlia Avenger.” The letter included a location. Police waited at the appointed time and place, but the author never showed.
Afterward, the alleged killer sent a note made of letters cut and pasted from magazines to the Examiner that said, “Have changed my mind. You would not give me a square deal. Dahlia killing was justified.”
Yet again, everything sent by the person had been wiped clean with gasoline, so investigators couldn’t lift any fingerprints from the evidence.
At one point, the LAPD had 750 investigators on the case and interviewed more than 150 potential suspects linked to the Black Dahlia killing. Officers heard more than 60 confessions during the initial investigation, but none of them were considered legitimate. Since then, there have been more than 500 confessions, none of which led to anyone being charged.
As time went on and the case went cold, many people assumed that the Black Dahlia murder was a date gone wrong, or that Short had run into a sinister stranger late at night while walking alone. After over 70 years, the Black Dahlia murder case remains open. But in recent years, a couple of intriguing — and chilling — theories have emerged.
A police bulletin seeking information on Elizabeth Short’s activities prior to the murder describes her as “very attractive” with “bad lower teeth” and “fingernails chewed to quick.”
Shortly after his father’s death in 1999, now-retired LAPD detective Steve Hodel was going through his dad’s belongings when he noticed two photos of a woman who bore a striking resemblance to Elizabeth Short.
After discovering these haunting images, Hodel began using the skills he had gained as a policeman to investigate his own deceased father. Hodel went through newspaper archives and witness interviews from the case, and even filed a Freedom of Information Act to obtain FBI files on the Black Dahlia murder.
He also had a handwriting expert compare samples of his father’s writing to the writing on some of the notes sent to the press from the alleged killer. The analysis found a strong possibility that his father’s handwriting matched, but the results were not conclusive.
On the grislier side, the Black Dahlia crime scene photos showed that Short’s body had been cut in a manner consistent with a hemicorporectomy, a medical procedure that slices the body beneath the lumbar spine. Hodel’s father had been a doctor — who attended medical school when this procedure was being taught in the 1930s.
Additionally, Hodel searched his father’s archives at UCLA, finding a folder full of receipts for contracting work on his childhood home. In that folder, there was a receipt dated a few days before the murder for a large bag of concrete, the same size, and brand as a concrete bag found near Elizabeth Short’s body.
By the time Hodel began his investigation, many of the police officers who originally worked on the case were already dead. However, he carefully reconstructed conversations these officers had about the case.
Eventually, Hodel compiled all of his evidence into a 2003 bestseller called Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story.
7 Myths About the “Wild West”
Few periods in American history have been more romanticized than the era of the “Wild West.” The period began with the first European colonial settlements in North America during the early 17th century, but what can be regarded as the classic era of the Old West — with its cowboys, gunslingers, prospectors and outlaws — stretched from around the 1850s to the early 1900s. Dime novels and Western movies created a frontier myth in which rugged men rode out to conquer a barren landscape and fight “bad guys,” and the image became a popular and enduring part of American culture, despite the many historical inaccuracies involved.
As a testament to the power of this mythmaking, many ideas and iconic images associated with the Old West are still widely accepted today, despite being factually incorrect. Here are seven of the most common misconceptions, debunked.
Myth: Wild West Cowboys Wore Cowboy Hats
Nothing says “cowboy” more than a classic cowboy hat. But the Stetson didn’t come onto the market until 1865, and the original hat didn’t look like the iconic Stetsons we know today (it had a high top and was missing the crease in the crown typical of cowboy hats). A more common choice among Old West cowboys was the derby hat, also known as the bowler hat, partly because it didn’t blow off easily in strong winds or while riding a horse. Many famous cowboys and outlaws, including Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, Black Bart, and Billy the Kid, wore bowler hats.
Myth: Quick-Draw Gun Duels Were Common
Quick-draw gun duels are a staple of Western dime novels and movies, typically with two steely-eyed gunfighters facing off in a dusty street while nervous locals watch from behind saloon doors and dirty windows. These kinds of duels, however, almost never happened. Typical shootouts were normally chaotic and impulsive events, often involving more than two men and with bullets flying in all directions — not the slow and calculated high-noon face-offs depicted in popular culture. One of the very few examples of a one-on-one quick-draw duel in a public place is the famous encounter between “Wild Bill” Hickok and the gambler Davis Tutt. Hickok killed Tutt, becoming a folk hero in the process.
Myth: Banks Were Easy Pickings
If Westerns are to be believed, robbing banks was a common pastime for any self-respecting outlaw. The criminals would ride into town in broad daylight, hold up a bank, ride off with their saddlebags full of money, and disappear into the wilderness. But this is very much a Hollywood creation. According to historian Larry Schweikart, there were fewer than 10 confirmed bank robberies between 1859 and 1900 across 15 frontier states. Other sources suggest the number was higher than 10, but still fewer than you would suspect. As Schweikart wrote, “There are more bank robberies in modern-day Dayton, Ohio, in a year than there were in the entire Old West in a decade, perhaps in the entire frontier period!” Myth: Cowboys Frequently Fought With “Indians”
Myth: Cowboys Frequently Fought With “Indians”
The popular “cowboys and Indians” narrative has both parties constantly at each other’s throats. (The use of the word “Indian” originated with Christopher Columbus, who mistakenly believed he had reached the shores of South Asia when he arrived in America, and referred to the native population as “Indios.”) But cowboys rarely fought with Indigenous peoples, and certainly not to the extent shown in Western movies. Tension did exist between ranchers and Native Americans, but cowboys normally avoided potentially hostile encounters (they were more inclined to let soldiers deal with that). Native Americans, meanwhile, didn’t ambush pioneer wagon trains nearly as much as we are led to believe — they mainly tolerated wagon trains and were more likely to trade than attack. Between 1840 and 1860, Native Americans killed 362 emigrants (and even more were killed by emigrants), making them far less dangerous than many other threats in the Wild West, including river crossings, hunting accidents, and falling off your own horse.
Myth: All Cowboys Were White
John Wayne, Gary Cooper, James Stewart, Clint Eastwood — think of nearly any actor known for starring in classic Westerns and they have one thing in common: They’re all white. The popular narrative, however, doesn’t tell the full story. Historians estimate that as many as one in four American cowboys were Black, as many formerly enslaved African Americans found work on the ranches out West in the wake of the Civil War. What’s more, the cowboy culture didn’t even originate in the United States; it came from a style of ranching introduced by Spanish colonists in the 16th century and adopted originally in Mexico, where cattle ranchers and herders were known as “vaqueros.” By the late 19th century, as many as one in three cowboys were Mexican.
Myth: The Typical Frontiersman Was a Romantic Figure
Cowboys and Wild West lawmen are often portrayed as romantic types — either the strong, silent type or the gallant hero who rides to the rescue, looking quite dapper in his clean shirt and shiny boots. But these frontiersmen were nowhere near as neat and tidy as we see on our screens, and, to put it bluntly, they stank. Author and historian Harry E. Chrisman wrote that cowboys “smelled of cow and horse dung, and seldom bathed. They wore beards that easily became nests for lice, fleas, or other vermin and provided secure foci of infection for barber’s itch.”
Myth: Everyone Was Packing a Six-Shooter
In the movies, it seems like every cowboy, cowhand, and dubious wandering stranger carries a revolver or a rifle. In reality, guns were heavily regulated in many towns and cities on the frontier. Most people did own guns in the West, but when it came to entering a town, you either had to leave your weapon at home or hand it over to local authorities. Dodge City, a famously wild frontier town in Kansas, had a large sign in the middle of town reading: “The Carrying of Firearms Strictly Prohibited.” Indeed, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona — the most famous shootout in the history of the Old West — reached a head when lawman Wyatt Earp ordered a group of cowboys to drop their weapons in accordance with local laws. According to Adam Winkler, a specialist in U.S. constitutional law, “Tombstone had much more restrictive laws on carrying guns in public in the 1880s than it has today.
Kim Kardashian is an idiot!
Kim Kardashian claims people ‘didn’t know’ who Marilyn Monroe was before she wore her dress.
The dress was first worn first in 1962.
Kim Kardashian has claimed that a lot of people only found out about Marilyn Monroe after she wore her dress to the Met Gala back in 2022.
Kardashian reportedly lost 16lbs to fit into Monroe’s famous “Happy Birthday Mr President” dress, which later sparked a debate about whether she had damaged it. The reality TV star denies this.
While appearing on NBC’s Today Show, the 43-year-old said she was shocked at how many people knew nothing about the actress.
“We were just talking. You said you were shocked on TikTok. Some people don’t even know who Marilyn Monroe was,” said host Savannah Guthrie.
In response, the mother of four said: “That was the most shocking thing to me, and that’s why I was so happy to at least have that opportunity and that Ripley’s allowed me to share this moment so that it could live on.”
The famous dress was worn by Monroe in Madison Square Garden in 1962, just three months before her death. While President John F. Kennedy branded her rendition of Happy Birthday as “wholesome,” a large number of people thought it was inappropriate and innately sexual.
Kardashian has been slammed for choosing to wear the one-of-a-kind dress, with many suggesting she was only doing it for the clout. But as she told Guthrie, she understands “how much this dress means to American history.”
People have known about Marilyn Monore since she became famous and still know of her today before Kardashian wore that dress. I was disgusted that she was allowed to wear it, and I don't like any of the Kardashians. They only became famous because their father helped someone get away with murder!
Thursday, January 11, 2024
Thursday, October 26, 2023
‘Bury them in fruit jars.’ A gay mass murder and the cover-up that followed.
Fifty years after the deadly fire at New Orleans' Up Stairs Lounge, new perspectives consider the atrocities that occurred after the blaze.
Flames shot through the crowded Up Stairs Lounge as bartender Buddy Rasmussen opened the front door to see who had been ringing the downstairs buzzer. Someone had lit the popular bar’s stairwell carpet on fire, and it burned its way up the wooden stairs into the bar, quickly igniting the lounge’s red wallpaper, curtains, and posters of Burt Reynolds naked on a bearskin rug and Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz wearing his seven gold medals, a star-spangled Speedo, and a smile.
Some patrons saw the blaze and ran for the nearest exits or down the stairwell, emerging with their clothes on fire as neighbors raced to pour pitchers of water onto them. Rasmussen began tapping patrons on the shoulder to follow him toward the fire exit at the back of the bar, but many were too shocked by the exploding blaze to move.
The June 24, 1973, conflagration, likely set by a sex worker ejected from the New Orleans bar earlier that night, killed 32 people and injured at least 15 others.
Yet the reaction to the catastrophe hardly matched the immense suffering the fire caused, and the tragedy was compounded by multiple denials: Public officials refused to issue statements about the fire, and Catholic churches refused to hold funeral services for the victims, whom they saw as unrepentant sinners. The media only reported on the fire briefly or not at all, and some families refused to claim their relatives’ bodies because they didn’t want to acknowledge that they were gay. Three of the victims ended up buried in unmarked graves — two remain unidentified.
To this day, the arson remains unsolved.
Hate crimes reverberate through communities, intimidating an entire class of people. The Up Stairs Lounge had been a safe space in the gay-friendly, tourist-heavy French Quarter. But as bar patrons feared a similar attack on other gathering spots, still others worried that police might start raiding gay bars more often and arresting more men in the name of public safety. Bar owners believed talking too much about the fire could hurt business. And locals just wanted to move on from the horror.
As a result, to this day, even many queer New Orleanians aren’t aware of the most devastating fire in their city’s history, the deadliest massacre of gay men in the U.S. before the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida.
This year, half a century later, there’s considerable important work being done to ensure that the arson and its aftermath are remembered and the deaths memorialized. For the tragedy’s anniversary, a group of community activists, religious leaders, and queer historians partnered with the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana and the Historic New Orleans Collection to organize a weekend of commemorative events at the end of June.
The weekend, attended by LGBTQ Nation, featured discussions with religious leaders and activists who lent a hand in the fire’s aftermath, artists who have made documentaries and theatrical works based on the event, church leaders concerned with the tragedy’s spiritual legacy, and podcasters and archivists dedicated to preserving its terrible memory. The weekend events also included art exhibitions, film screenings, a memorial service, and a “second line” jazz funeral through the city’s streets to the now defunct bar’s front entrance.
Their work is especially important considering the current backlash against remembering the atrocities America has committed against its most vulnerable communities. Extreme right-wingers are busy denying our guilt over slavery, the genocide of Native Americans, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and the effect these traumas have on minority communities to this day.
But those committed to preserving history aren’t just making artworks and public speeches about the tragedy; they’re also working to ensure that the victims and their families finally get the recognition and empathy they deserve for their loss.
The fire occurred when New Orleans author Johnny Townsend was only 11 years old. Though he saw horrific photos of the aftermath on TV news at the time, as he grew up, he could find little background on what happened. So in 1989 — 16 years after the fire — he began tracking down the bar’s survivors and former patrons with the help of Rasmussen, the lounge’s surviving bartender.
Through interviews and research, Townsend published the first historical account of what happened as well as profiles for each victim in his 2011 book Let the Faggots Burn. The amateur historian struggled to find a publisher, so he eventually published it himself via BookLocker.com. After the 333-page book was released, a son of one of the fire’s victims approached him after Townsend spoke publicly about the book and said that all he had ever known of his father was what his mother had told him: “Your father was a drunk, and he died at a bar.”
Townsend’s book had given his dad back to him. Today, the historical amnesia is finally being addressed. There are three books about the fire — including Clayton Delery-Edwards’ comprehensive 2014 account, The Up Stairs Lounge Arson, and Robert W. Fieseler’s 2018 nonfiction narrative, Tinderbox.
Three documentaries have been made about the arson, with a fourth in production, as well as one play, a stage musical, four unproduced screenplays, a dance piece, various podcasts, and a permanent art installation.
One of the documentaries, a 2013 short by Royd Anderson, helped the estranged family of World War II veteran Ferris LeBlanc realize that he was one of three “unidentified white males” who perished in the blaze. The city buried his corpse in an unmarked plot within Resthaven Memorial Park, a potter’s field located near the city’s northeastern coast.
Anderson is now working on a documentary called Saving Ferris and pressuring government officials to exhume LeBlanc and give him the proper military burial that he deserved.
Max Vernon’s 2017 stage musical, The View UpStairs, depicts a snarky gay fashionista millennial who buys the dilapidated Up Stairs Lounge to launch his flagship store but is then magically transported to 1973, just before the fire. Despite its tragic content, it has been seen by over 100,000 people — Off-Broadway, in multiple U.S. cities, as well as in England and Australia — and has been translated into Japanese and seen by 20,000 theatergoers. Drag legend RuPaul called the musical “fantastic.”
By Daniel Villarreal Wednesday, October 25, 2023
Fraud 101: Scams and how to spot them
There is no shortage of bad actors out there employing a plethora of schemes all with the same object — separating people an their money or valuables.
But there are ways to spot a scam, and steps you can take if you believe you have been a victim or an intended one.
Prevention is the first and most important step to heading off a scam.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, some typical phone scams include:
• You may be a winner — You may be, but if you have to pay to get the prize, it’s not a prize, it’s a scam.
• You are in trouble with the law — The caller may say you will be arrested or fined if you don’t pay a certain tax or debt. The goal is to frighten you into paying, but real law enforcement agencies do not make such threatening calls.
• Act now — Legitimate businesses will give you time to consider their offer. Take your time and don’t give in to pressure.
• Gift cards are a gift … to the scammer — Callers often ask you to pay by wiring money or using a gift card, prepaid card or cash reload card. The purpose is to make it difficult for you to get your money back. Such calls are almost always a scam.
• Don’t give out private information — Agencies such as Social Security or the IRS will not call you for sensitive information.
• You don’t have to take those robocalls— If you are on the national Do Not Call Registry you should not get live sales calls from companies you’ve not done business with in the past; in fact those calls are illegal, and whether it’s a scam or not, probably a hint that it’s someone you don’t want to do business with.
Some other common scams, the FTC warns, include:
• Impersonators — Someone calls, claiming to be with a government agency or even a love interest. They may even have fake names or numbers to fool your caller ID.
• Debt relief scams — The caller will offer to lower your interest rates or get loan forgiven — but only if you pay first.
• Investment scams — Before you invest your money, check out the potential investment with securities regulators.
• Charity scams — Always check out a charity before parting with your money, and don’t feel pressured to give over the phone.
• Extended car warranties — Callers find out what kind of car you drive and offer overpriced or worthless service contracts.
• Free trials — Be sure you can cancel when the “free trial” is up.
• Loan scams — The scammers target people with poor credit histories to guarantee loans or credit cards for an up-front fee. Legitimate lenders don’t work that way, especially if you have poor credit or no credit.
• Travel or timeshare scams — Free or low-cost vacations can cost you a lot of cash, and sometimes you find out there is no vacation.
When you receive a call you’re not comfortable with, the FTC advises these steps:
• Hang up — As noted above, robocalls are illegal if you are on the Do Not Call Registry. Don’t press numbers or speak to anyone, it will just lead to more robocalls.
• Consider call blocking or call labeling.
• Don’t trust your caller ID — Scammers can make any name or number show up on your phone ID.
Scams can take many forms, and sometimes take the form of a new romance. But, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the same rules of caution apply. Some warning signs:
• A new love who lives far away asks you to wire money or share your credit card number;
•Your love interest asks you to sign a document giving them control of your finances or your house;
• Your love asks you to open a joint bank account or co-sign a loan;
• The new flame asks for access to your bank or credit card accounts.
Saturday, August 19, 2023
What Happened on the Trains That Brought Wounded World War II Soldiers Home?
During World War II, as the number of wounded soldiers needing transport back to the United States rose, the Army developed and managed a complex network of hospital trains that brought the injured from ports across the country to care facilities near their homes.
Now primarily a remnant of the past (at least in the U.S.), hospital trains were an essential element of American military operations for nearly a century. They were first used during the Civil War, then again during World War I. But during World War II, that familiarity didn’t save the Army and the Office of the Surgeon General from needing to undertake a laborious revamp of the system that nearly stretched to the end of the conflict in 1945.
During World War II, as the number of wounded soldiers needing transport back to the United States rose, the Army developed and managed a complex network of hospital trains that brought the injured from ports across the country to care facilities near their homes.
Now primarily a remnant of the past (at least in the U.S.), hospital trains were an essential element of American military operations for nearly a century. They were first used during the Civil War, then again during World War I. But during World War II, that familiarity didn’t save the Army and the Office of the Surgeon General from needing to undertake a laborious revamp of the system that nearly stretched to the end of the conflict in 1945.
In the aftermath of World War I, officials drafted plans for new hospital trains, suggesting the Army use converted commercial rail cars to move the wounded, according to an official 1956 history of the Army Medical Department’s domestic operations during World War II. Planning escalated in 1939, as fighting broke out in Europe and U.S. involvement in the conflict appeared likely. Work was still underway when the U.S. entered the war after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. As the wounded began to return to the States in 1942, domestic transport was conducted almost entirely by commercial train; at the time, the Army had just six functioning hospital train cars, and aircraft were typically reserved for other essential wartime tasks.
"Seventy-eight years after the end of World War II, hospital trains are an oft-forgotten chapter in U.S. military history. America’s wounded soldiers have returned home by airplane for decades, with the popularity and speed of air travel for both military and civilian purposes ensuring the transportation method’s dominance. Trains, the mechanical advent that made it possible to settle the West, were once iconic American symbols. Now, as their role in popular culture shifts and the number of surviving World War II veterans dwindles, the fleeting years of domestic hospital trains are disappearing much like a train in the night.
Initially, military officers coordinated with commercial railroad companies to carry injured troops from America’s ports to hospitals around the country on Pullman sleeping cars. The arrangement was far from ideal. It could take as long as two weeks to secure space on commercial trains once requested, leading to delays in treatment and potential overcrowding in hospitals. Even when trains were available, staff struggled to load patients onto cars and navigate the narrow aisles.
The setup “presented some problems because obviously [the commercial cars] weren’t designed for that” purpose, says Robert S. Gillespie, a Houston-based nephrologist and amateur historian who runs RailwaySurgery.org, a website dedicated to the history of hospital trains. “Getting patients in and out was a problem. Sometimes they would bring them [in] through the windows.”"
 Interior view of a kitchen car in a U.S. Army Medical Department hospital train. |
These [diner cars] often failed to meet Army standards of sanitation, carried no foods for special diets, served meals that became monotonous, provided midmorning or midafternoon nourishment for patients only at high costs, were not open for meals for attendants on night duty, and were often uncoupled at junction points, leaving both patients and attendants without meals for the remainder of their journeys.
As these and other complications arose, the Army debated whether to convert existing Pullman cars or create purpose-built hospital cars from scratch. Eventually, officials settled on the latter, deploying four purpose-built cars: ward, ward dressing, kitchen, and unit cars. The unit car, which in 1944 replaced an earlier design of the same name, proved popular due its flexibility. These cars functioned as self-contained units, with berths for the wounded, a kitchen and a dressing room. They could be detached from military trains and attached to commercial trains without compromising the care of the patients on board.
Hospital trains had their work cut out for them. In January 1943, the number of wounded soldiers returning stateside for medical care was 2,475; in May 1945, that figure peaked at 57,030, according to Smith. By the end of World War II, writes Gillespie on his website, the U.S. Army owned 202 unit cars, 80 ward cars, 38 ward dressing cars and 60 kitchen cars—380 cars in total.
“How do you manage [so many] things moving across the system?” Marble asks. “You have to have some kind of management system to get the right people to the right place, and they did it without computers.”
"Staffing the trains proved to be almost as difficult as constructing and transporting them. The number of service members assigned to each train was based on the number of patients; directives specifying the exact ratios required changed throughout the war. This guidance was often considered misguided by the people charged with putting it into effect, and in some cases, it was outright ignored. Stark General Hospital in Charleston, South Carolina, provides a helpful frame of reference for staff size: The 17 hospital trains it sent out between March 1944 and May 1945 “each carried an average of 190 patients and had assigned as attendants an average of 6 doctors, 3 administrative officers, 5 nurses and 57 enlisted men,” Smith reported."
"The doctors in charge of medical care were relatively junior, because the patients on board were stable enough to travel by train, says Marble. Emergency procedures would have been few and far between. Performing surgery on a swaying, moving train could be done but was a last resort. Instead, officers managed supplies, medical paperwork and other logistics, while enlisted men served as medics, cooks and similarly essential personnel. Nurses managed the day-to-day care of patients and passed orders on to the medics.
Inside, quarters were tight. The unit car, for example, measured 84.5 feet long. It carried up to 36 patients in three-tiered bunks and contained a kitchen; a receiving room that functioned as a pharmacy, administrative office and emergency operating room; two bathrooms; and a storage area. As cramped as the trains might have been, they at least weren’t hot and stuffy. The Office of the Surgeon General mandated that they be built with air conditioning—a luxury at the time."
"While the experiences of those who worked on or were cared for on these trains have received little attention in the ample canon of World War II film and literature, contemporary newspaper accounts offer a sense of what their lives were like."
In August 1942, an Atlanta Journal writer traveling aboard what he hailed as the Army’s “first hospital train” described the debarkation at Lawson General Hospital in Georgia:
Stretcher cases were removed from the coaches through a double door, which opened wide enough to allow their exit. More than half the men were able to walk out. Several faces looked old with recent illness. One man glanced anxiously around, meanwhile whistling nervously under his breath. A paratrooper hobbled down with a bum ankle. As he stood at the top of the train steps, he glanced down the short flight with probably more apprehension than he showed as he made a jump.
“From midnight to dawn, the patients aboard the hospital cars slept little,” wrote the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in March 1944, when its reporter traveled on a hospital train similarly bound for Lawson. “Most of them were from Georgia, and they knew they were nearing home.” One man dreamed of hunting for rabbits when he got home, while another envisioned his future girlfriend.
A year later, the Vermont-based Burlington Free Press profiled Marion Taggart, a local Red Cross worker assigned to a hospital train. She described the extent of the soldiers’ injuries and how some used humor to mask their pain and longing for home.
One young man Taggart encountered lost both of his legs while serving in France. When she passed his bunk, he playfully asked her, “How about going for a walk?”
Taggart recalled, “Every time I came through his car after that, I’d kid him, too. I’d say to him, ‘I wish you’d keep your feet out of the aisle. I’m falling all over them.’ Then he’d laugh.”
"Interior view of a hospital train car, 1944"
Hospital trains also transported soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental illnesses. In December 1943, a reporter for the Associated Press recounted his trip aboard “a swanky hospital train carrying the armless and legless, the blind, and the partially insane” from Staten Island to Ohio. Staff followed now-outdated protocol when treating psychiatric cases, installing heavy mesh wire screens on hospital car windows to stop patients from trying to escape and employing sedation and restraints, wrote Smith in the 1956 history.
“Doctors told us that about 30 percent of the returning cases are mental,” the AP reported. “Some are curable. … Some of the boys were bitter about the war and what it had done to them. Others felt lucky to be alive. Some of them wanted to recover and return to the Army. Many were mad at the Germans and at the atrocities Nazi soldiers committed.”
Though wartime newspaper accounts tended to focus on the wounded rather than the men and women working on hospital trains, Taggart’s profile offers a glimpse of the long hours and lack of personal space these individuals faced.
“There are no union hours on hospital trains,” the Free Press noted. “From 7 a.m. until the last patient is quieted down for the night, about 10, the Red Cross worker is busy. Trains shuttle all over the country. Her sleeping quarters are in a corner of a ward car, curtained off with a sheet. No fancy dressing rooms are provided.” Once, Taggart told the newspaper, she was so busy she didn’t bathe for nine days.
For soldiers and staff alike, the cramped conditions probably fostered both boredom and kinship. “There might have been a lot of camaraderie on board, because during the daytime, the beds could fold up and they could make tables out of them,” Gillespie says. “I imagine the people that weren’t too sick were sitting around talking [and] playing cards.”
While the patients were all generally considered stable enough to travel, the toll of their physical and emotional injuries would have cast a pall at times. “The amount of trauma they experienced must have been staggering and not really addressed in the way that we would look at it today,” Gillespie says.
My father’s recollections of his time in the Army suggested as much. Herbert J. Stern served on domestic hospital trains after graduating from Officer Candidate School in 1944. He occasionally shared some of his experiences with me before his death in 2002 at age 84.
On one of his trips, my father encountered a patient known to be a psychiatric concern. The man got ahold of a glass container—a Coke bottle, perhaps, or a glass vial for plasma—and broke it with the intent of harming others, himself or both. A tense standoff ensued, but staff managed to calm the soldier down before anyone got hurt.
Another story my father told centered on a burly, stoic patient who lost one of his legs in battle. When the man reached his destination, he made his way onto the platform on crutches and greeted his wife and young son. The child pushed his dad’s bathrobe aside to hug his legs, then looked up and asked where the other leg was. The man broke down, sobbing into his wife’s embrace. This was the tale my father recounted most often.
An Army hospital train during the Korean War
Hospital trains’ turbulent mixture of boredom, camaraderie, humor, and emotional trauma wouldn’t have been evident to the civilians who showed up to welcome them. Though trains’movements weren’t publicized ahead of time, the Post-Gazette noted that “the news always gets around,” perhaps via “a local train dispatcher’s gossip with a neighbor.”
The Pittsburgh newspaper recounted how a local resident “was stretching curtains in her frame cottage when she saw [a] hospital train pull into the station. She bustled out to a little shed adjoining her home and loaded a cart with old magazines, playing cards and apples. She wheeled the cart up to the train and handed the articles over to medical corpsmen for distribution among patients. … Officers who frequently make trips on the hospital trains always look forward to [her] visits. She’s as punctual as the trains themselves.”
A 1945 report in the Montana Standard detailed how members of the American Women'sVoluntary Services rushed into action on short notice when they knew a train was coming, noting, “Within 30 minutes, they filled 300 cardboard containers with ice cold milk, capped the bottles and delivered them to the depot as the train pulled in.”
A hospital train car on view at the U.S. Army Medical Department Museum in San Antonio
The Army continued to run hospital trains in the months immediately following the war’s end as the rest of the wounded returned home. When escalating tensions between the Soviet Union and the U.S. threatened to spark another global conflict, the Army kept these trains on hand, Marble says. Though hospital trains weren’t used domestically during the Korean War, the Army sent some abroad. By the time the U.S. entered the Vietnam War in 1965, however, wounded soldiers were transported chiefly by airplane.
The now-defunct hospital trains were sold to private parties, including museums and the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus, or destroyed as scrap. Today, a handful of World War II hospital cars are on display at such institutions as the U.S. Army Medical Department Museum in San Antonio and the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie, Washington.
Reflecting on the transportation method’s significance in August 1942, when the Army’s first hospital train delivered patients to a hospital in Georgia, the Atlanta Journal perhaps summarized it best. As reporter Frank Daniel wrote, “The … train moved on to Fort Bragg, mechanized mercy in a world of mechanized war.”
Sunday, August 13, 2023
Jason Summerfield and Brandon Wright
Date of birth: 05/02/1986
Various Social Security Numbers
location: London, Ontario
Nationality: Canadian
UPDATE AS OF AUGUST 2023
Their last known address was 5317 Rivoli Drive in Macon, GA. They were last known for driving a black 2018 Dodge Durango with black rims. Email addresses: info@goodtalentmanagement.com and asst.jason@goodtalentmanagement.com
Brandon attended Thames Secondary School at 785 Trafalgar St, London, Ontario, Canada, N5Z 1E6. Brandon allegedly left Canada by swimming across the border from British Columbia into Washington State.
Actors and models are warned that Brandon Wright is a compulsive liar and a con artist. Brandon has lured five (and counting) aspiring male models with false promises and fake modeling campaigns. Brandon (AKA John Wright, Brandon Brockwood, Brandon Saucier, Brandon Brockwood-Saucier, Brandon Martinez, Britni Larsen, Alex Simon, Sara Conner, Layla Marie Parker, Sara Kern, and Brandon Kenneth) alleges that he is a modeling agent and event manager. He claims to work for and/or have a professional affiliation with Eva Longoria, Creative Artists Agency/CAA, Charlie Sheen, Johnny Depp, Kanye West, and many other celebrities. Brandon has fraudulently maintained he could get one actor a recurring role on "True Blood" and another a high-paying role in a Robert DeNiro film, neither of which he has any affiliation with. Brandon portrays himself as a manager with Kids 2 Fame, Kids Talent Network, and The Talent Network. Brandon has contacted individuals via Facebook, offering to book them directly for various modeling jobs. He has been committing fraud in London, Ontario, Canada, and the United States. Brandon is stalking one of his victims. His last whereabouts were in Denver, Colorado, where he was placed in a Psychiatric facility for 72 hours and then released before we could get all the evidence submitted to the police.
Six more models have provided statements where Brandon has conned them out of $700 to $1,500 for the same scam he did with Vandervort and Myros. Brandon has lured at least "two" models to Canada. Another model claims Brandon had offered him $200 to have dinner with him and allow Brandon to massage him. Brandon Wright does not have a modeling agency, and he has lured at least one American model to Canada with false promises and fake modeling campaigns. It was reported by well-known and highly respected model and victim actor Paul that Brandon had been contacting him for over a year via Facebook, offering to book him directly for various modeling jobs.
In May 2010, Brandon guaranteed Paul two modeling campaigns for the Canadian-based company "Bootlegger" and promised that Paul would be paid for both campaigns upon arrival for $23,000. Paul accepted the offer, and Brandon booked his flight and made hotel reservations. Paul spent four days in London, Ontario, waiting to shoot his campaign with Bootlegger, but the shoot kept getting pushed back; however, Brandon claimed he'd already received confirmation from his contact "Evelyn" at Bootlegger that Vandervort's fee of $23,000 was already successfully wired to Paul's account in Los Angeles and that Paul had nothing to worry about if the shoot were to get pushed even further or postponed. This was NOT the case at all.
LAST KNOWN ADDRESSES
Econo Lodge Inn& Suites 160Centenially Dr. Carrollton GA 30116
Motel 6 - Columbus, Ohi
Motel 6 - Throughout Orange County in California
Motel 6 - Throughout Los Angeles County in California
11941 Saltair Terrace, Los Angeles, Ca. 90049
Motel 6 - 1001 S San Gabriel Blvd., Rosemead, CA 91770
427 Westbourne Drive West Hollywood, CA 90048-1911
7374 W. Lake Mead Blvd Ste 100, Las Vegas, NV 89128
18-35 Waterman Ave, London, ON N6C 5T4
191 Arbour Glen Crest, London, ON N5Y 2A4
Brandon used fraudulent documents from Canada Revenue and TD Canada Trust banks to purchase a yacht from Cruising Yachts at 1880 Harbor Island Drive, San Diego, CA 92101. The telephone number is (619) 681-0633. In November 2013, Brandon used the name of Brandon Miller with the address of 1041 Laurel Way, Beverly Hills, CA 90210. He also used the same documents to purchase a Jaguar from Jaguar/Land Rover - Salesman Gary Briggs, located at 1540 Jamboree Road, Newport Beach, CA.
In August 2013, Brandon attempted to purchase a 2014 Aston Martin under the name of Brandon Miller using the address of 11941 Salter Terrace, Los Angeles, Ca. 90049 Audi North Atlantic - Salesman Jonathan Bush located at 11100 Alpharetta Hwy, Rosewell, GA, 30076. Telephone number (678) 795-3300.
In December 2013, Brandon attempted to purchase another vehicle. Levi left Brandon in California, and Brandon stalked him to Georgia. Brandon is a good con artist, so beware!
Victim Levi stated that Brandon kept him away from Facebook and that Brandon had purchased a Mercedes. Levi left Brandon in Florida, Brandon Miller on December 2nd in Miami, and Brandon had a 2008 Aston Martin. Brandon demanded that Levi do sexual favors to get a modeling contract. Garrison (another model) made him do sexual favors as well.
Now he is using the video to threaten and blackmail Levi's family. Brandon said his money was in Canada, and he was dying from stomach cancer. Thomas Bier is an attorney for model Rick Day so Rick told Levi to leave Brandon. He lived in the motel 6 in Los Angeles for 2 months. He bought yachts and clothes and said he knew Johnny Depp and Charlie Sheen and others. Like Documents from Paramount Pictures stated that Brandon worked for them and threatened that UTA would sue the family if the others. Brandon took all of Levi's money and his family's money.
Police notified:
OfficerNawid Sarwar
Milledgeville Police Department
125 West McIntosh Street
Milledgeville, GA 31061
Tel: 478-414-4000
Case # 14-0004
UPDATE AS OF DECEMBER 20, 2013
Brandon was somewhere in Georgia, where he continued to commit fraud, pornography, blackmail, and making terrorist threats. Brandon steals from department stores and returns them to get cash. This is a current photo of Brandon, who uses the names of Brandon Miller and Brandon North. He is somewhere in Georgia, where he continues to commit fraud, pornography, blackmail, and making terrorist threats. Brandon steals from department stores, returns them for cash, or sells them on the streets to get money to live on.
He is working with his assistant Nicholas Christensen, and they claim to manage Levi. Brandon claims to work for Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Brad Grey, UTA, and Tracy Jacobs—other models. Brandon attempted to purchase a Yacht and Aston Martin in Orange County, California. Morgan and they were driving a white Chevrolet Silverado registered to Nick with plates from Utah. We have now learned that they are driving a tan vehicle. Brandon mostly stays at Motel 6 or other cheap hotels. Brandon and Nick broke into one of the victim's houses a few weeks ago. This is one of the photos obtained. Another victim was lured into being cast for a Bud Light commercial to be filmed on a weekend. IPG (Inter-Republic Group) was said to be the ad firm doing the commercial. Brandon and Nick were staying in a cabin on Lake Sinclair. Brandon bought an Audi R8 for another victim but said his new fake name is Courtney Elizabeth on social networks to gain the trust of his male victims.
The photo below was taken when Brandon was beaten after another modeling deal went sour with Canadian football 'hero' Alex Myros of the London Silverbacks. Brandon claims that Alex's gay hatred beat him up. It wasn't gay-bashing, a former semi-pro football player says of why he punched a gay man in the head. Instead, the former London Silverback testified, it was because he was shaken down by a con man that made him believe he'd get a $200,000 pornographic modeling contract if he took part in sexual acts and paid out $700.
Alex admitted he was "gullible" with Brandon Wright, a self-described modeling agent injured on September 8, 2009, after he was punched and jumped from Myros' pickup. Myros, whose heroism in a 2009 car crash earned him a bravery citation, pleaded not guilty to two counts of uttering threats but guilty to assault causing bodily harm. Myros insisted Wright's sexual orientation had nothing to do with it. Myros
"I have no problem with a person's sexuality," he said repeatedly. Before hearing Myros' version, Superior Court Justice John Desotti heard from Wright, 24, who has two criminal convictions for theft under $5,000. It was apparent that Wright had suffered from an astonishing witness amnesia as he testified through the closed-circuit TV. His testimony was replete with "I'm not sure," "I don't remember," and "I don't know." Wright didn't want to review his police statement and couldn't recall what he said at Myros' preliminary hearing.
January 5, 2014 - Brandon and Nicholas are on the run again. They were last seen in Georgia and possibly heading to Florida.
Please get in touch with us if you see or hear about Brandon Wright.
LAST KNOWN EMAILS
wrightsophia50@gmail.com
Brandonk930@gmail.com
Britni11031@yahoo.com
Blake.griffin89@aol.com
Latin_longoria@aol.com
John.c.depp.jd@gmail.com
Elizabeth.bowers@aol.com
Corra_james@gmx.com
Sscarter@aol.com
Kanye_w@live.ca
(323) 496-1773
(435 659-5574
(424) 230-9010
(310) 927-1606
(713) 410-3501
(323) 333-6921
(323) 333-9502
(207) 551-5490
(207) 433-0820